3 ms·
I often wonder if these advancements in information processing now allow for centrally planned economies to compete with free market ones. What would have happe
by zarkov99 6y ago
I often wonder if these advancements in information processing now allow for centrally planned economies to compete with free market ones. What would have happened if the USSR had all the tools we have today for monitoring and computation?
- logicchains 6y agoThe problem with centrally planned economies wasn't one of processing power, it was one of information. The market is essentially based on "actions speak louder than words": if someone is willing to spend their hard-earned money on something, this reveals their preference for this thing. The market aggregates these preferences, incentivising production that meets this demand. Without a system for people to express such preferences, it's impossible to determine what to produce, no matter how much processing power is available, because one cannot know what people want. If people were given some allocation of credits that they could spend to indicate what they'd like, then that's just a market under another name.
- zarkov99 6y agoI am not sure preferences are as inscrutable as you imply when you can monitor every conversation, every social media interaction, every email exchange, every Baidu search. In fact I am pretty sure they aren't.